


don't make a shadow (of yourself)

by lymricks



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post Season 3, canon compliant but like I do what I want post episode 8 is the theme of this fic, is kind of my brand?, seriously please don't read this if you haven't seen it, there are SPOILERS in the FIRST SENTENCE!, we're just picking up and running with it friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-06-23 12:59:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19701868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: And Billy, curled in a cheap plastic seat with his eyes squeezed shut, wonders, could it really be this easy? Just get on a bus and go home?(It isn't that easy).[This is post s3 & there are spoilers in here!]





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> S P O I L E R S for s3 please don't read on if you haven't watched it S P O I L E R S
> 
> title and the lyrics at the end from [Third Eye](https://genius.com/Florence-the-machine-third-eye-lyrics) by Florence + the Machine.

Billy Hargrove doesn’t die.

He wakes up on a hard tile floor and he knows that he’s not dead because he doesn’t feel dead. He’s not sure, if he’s honest, what dead feels like, just that he’s not it. He’d thought that he would be dead, honestly, because of the claws in his side and then finally the one through his chest, but he isn’t dead. He knows this because he _wakes up_.

Billy blinks his eyes open and stares at a boarded up ceiling where he remembers glass and bright lights from when the mall had opened. He tries hard to remember everything that happened, but it comes in bits and pieces. 

He remembers a little girl, remembers telling her not to be afraid, remembers her telling him that his mother was really pretty. He remembers the tight nod of his head and the feeling of that shadow in his brain retreating as he dug in against it. He remembers standing and stopping it with his palms, remembers the shock he felt at something so gooey being so solid. He doesn’t remember the first claws, the ones that tore his sides open, but he does remember that last one through the chest, how it felt like getting punched _really hard_.

He remembers, too, telling Max that he was sorry. He remembers that she didn’t tell him _it’s okay_ , but he does think that she probably meant to, that she would have if he had just fucking _listened_ for once and stayed awake like she had asked him. The problem, he thinks, lying on his back on the tile floor, is that he’s never been a good listener. He’s learned, too, that people don’t like that he’s not a good listener. Not girlfriends. Not his dad. Not his mom. It makes him, maybe, unloveable, but he thinks now that Max might love him, just based on what he remembers about her face in that moment, her stupid pigtail braids.

Billy Hargrove wakes up on the floor of Starcourt Mall, but he doesn’t _really_ wake up, is maybe what he’s starting to think, because his memories are fractured, but he fucking _knows_ what he remembers and - and this shit _must_ be rigged, because the floor of the mall is clean and there are boards up on the windows and what used to be the roof. There are sounds of what must be construction work happening outside--demolition, maybe--and he’s in a white tank top and his jeans and his boots, but there isn’t a drop of blood--black or otherwise--on him.

Standing up is a _process_. He doesn’t feel hurt at all, which also seems strange, given the puncture wound thing that had happened right before he’d apparently _not_ died, but he does feel slow, like his blood has been replaced by syrup, like he doesn’t remember how to use his limbs. When he’s on his feet, though, that feeling fades. Everything slots back into place, works how it should. He feels _fine_.

He checks his reflection in that last remaining window to be sure he looks fine, too, but even his fucking _hair_ looks good and that’s just _really fucking weird_.

The weirdness of it allows him to focus on _weird_ and not _broken_ , which he thinks he might be after what he did. He remembers that, too, but won’t catalog it, not now and not ever, because Billy’s learned the hard fucking way that if you think about the shit that hurts it digs and digs and _digs_ and then you’re _done_.

Don’t get hurt, that’s the first lesson his dad taught him, when they both realized his mom wasn’t coming back, when they were both hurting. Don’t get hurt, his dad taught him, get _angry_ , and so Billy did.

It’s different, though, what he’s done in Hawkins. It’s different than all the fights that came before. Billy thinks of Heather dissolving. He thinks of the blankness in her face. When he used to hit people, that had felt _good_ and felt _angry_ , this doesn’t feel good at all and--

And now he’s fucking _thinking_ about it. Of fucking _course_. 

What he needs to be thinking about, he realizes, is how to get out of goddamn Starcourt Mall, because that’s looking like it might be the biggest challenge he’s up against in this moment and he’s trying to only think about the challenges that he’s up against in _this moment_ , instead of thinking about all the rest of the moments he’s experienced over the last few--was it days? Was it really only days?

That makes him feel dizzy, so he sits down for a while and stares at the tile floor that doesn’t have a single drop of blood on it, not his and not anyone else’s.

Eventually, he gets up. He’s sort of expecting to hurt, but he doesn’t. He feels _fine_. It had made sense that he’d felt _fine_ when he’d been sharing his mind and his space with that _thing_ , but it makes less sense now. It had protected him from pain because he was useful. It was--honestly--the only time anyone had protected him from pain _ever_ and so he’d been expecting to feel a little more fucking _grateful_ , but he doesn’t, not at all, not with the shit that he did, the shit he’s not thinking about because if he thinks about it then he’s going to fall apart and--

And he still hasn’t figured out how to get out of the mall.

He walks toward Scoops Ahoy--where he never went because he didn’t _fuck_ with Steve Harrington, not after Max’s whole thing with the bat--because it’s the closest to where he woke up. It also looks the least damaged. He climbs over the counter and lands hard on booted feet and that doesn’t hurt, either. He just doesn’t hurt at all. Not even a little. Not in _any way_ , and that thing had protected him because he was _useful_ and--

And what if it’s still there? Just. Sleeping. It had slept or something, sometimes, and Billy had some clarity, but not the wherewithal to ask for any fucking help.

What if it’s still _in_ him? 

And that makes his heart beat fast with panic and he screams with it, because you don’t get scared either, you just get angry. He lets the anger burn him up and the heat feels good so he leans into that anger. When he finds another board over a door that he thinks might let him out, he tears it open, off the wall, and _that_ hurts, makes his fingers ache, so that when he bursts through into the fading sunlight of an early evening in Hawkins, Indiana, he can snarl at that almost beauty and spit in its face.

He hurts. His fingers hurt. More of him than that hurts, too, but he’s not fucking thinking about _that_ , so.

He shivers at the chill in the air, goosebumps rising on his flesh. Billy rubs at the back of his neck and looks around.

His next problem, then, once his fingers stop hurting and his breathing evens out, is that he needs to get back to actual Hawkins, not just this fucking mall, but _obviously_ no one is still _going_ to the mall because of the whole monster and fire and _disaster_ thing that happened, so he has to walk for a while, until he finds a bus stop that people are still willing to look at or go near. It’s a long walk. It’s pretty far from the mall, but he can’t really blame them for that.

Still, the walk is long, so he’s tired and grumpy when he finds it and still so fucking cold. He doesn’t really think anything of it because he’s been cold for a long time, now, but he does wonder if that means he’s alone or if he’s not.

Billy doesn’t look at the two other people waiting and they don’t look at him. He’s not sure if it’s because they can smell it on him, what he did, or because he just looks that kind of angry, that kind of _don’t speak to me or there’ll be trouble_ kind of angry his dad had mastered by the time Billy was fifteen years old.

Billy boards the bus and drops the coins he’d found in his back pocket into the slot. He grunts at the driver, who doesn’t say anything to him, and it makes Billy’s lips curl. He walks to the back of the bus and slumps down in the corner, his head leaning against the window, and it’s only when the bus starts to move that he has to close his eyes so that he doesn’t do something stupid like start crying.

And Billy, curled in a cheap plastic seat with his eyes squeezed shut wonders, could it really be this easy? Just get on a bus and fucking _go_ _home_?

Billy keeps his eyes closed the whole way, his fingertips pushing into his thighs as he breathes in the smell of gasoline and people’s lunches. You shouldn’t fucking _eat_ a tuna sandwich on a bus, he wants to scream, but he doesn’t scream that, because the smell of tuna sandwiches reminds him that he _isn’t dead_ , and that’s really fucking nice to not be after all of that shit, so he smells the tuna and grips his own legs, and waits for his stop to get called. 

When he gets off the bus, Billy does what any kid would do, what he’s kind of wanted to do since he woke up on the floor of the mall, however fucked up this want is: he goes home.

He gets off as close as he can to the house and then trudges the rest of the way there. The town is so quiet that it’s almost eerie, but as he watches the house numbers tick up from the three hundreds to the four hundreds and then sees his squat little house with its crumbling steps, Billy thinks that maybe a town should be quiet after half of it fucking _dies_ because of a _monster_.

And maybe, also, because of him, but thinking about that is on the _nope_ list, and so he shoves it off to the side as he walks up the steps, pulls his keys out of his pocket, and goes inside.

“Hello?” he calls, “Anyone home?” but he doesn’t get an answer, just his voice echoing off the walls. Billy shrugs and walks down the hall, into his room, which is quiet and untouched--fucking Max hasn’t been snooping or stealing any of his _shit_ at least--and flops down on his bed in his jeans and his boots and his tank top. Finally, exhausted, tired, and maybe a little bit afraid, Billy falls the fuck asleep.

~

When he wakes up, there are sounds in the house. Billy blinks a little bit and stretches, his spine popping. He rolls onto his side and tucks his arm under his head, staring at the door to his room. He wonders if anyone will come in to check if he’s here. He wonders if anyone even noticed he’s _gone_ , but they must have. For the mall to be boarded up, they _must_ have noticed he’s gone. It has to have been a few days, at least, and he thinks it’s some real shitty _police_ that fucking--just _left him there_.

Or cleaned him up and left him there? Billy’s still kind of trying to put the pieces together. 

Assuming they’ve noticed he’s gone--even if it’s only to be like, wow, thank fuck, one less mouth to feed--he should probably be delicate coming back in so he doesn’t _scare_ anyone, but _fuck that_ , because Billy’s pissed that he got left in a mall for however many days, and he’s _pissed_ about the last eighteen years of his life, and he’s a little pissed that Max didn’t try to tell him _it’s okay_ when he said _I’m sorry_ on that floor, even if he thinks she might have meant it.

So Billy stands up, rips the door to his bedroom open, and storms down the hall. He figures you only get to do something like this once, and so he leans into it, a little. His dad’ll probably be too busy being shocked to be _really_ mad, and even if it is, it’s probably fucking worth it.

He swans into the kitchen, leans against the wall and says, “What’s up, motherfuckers? I hope Susan didn’t make that goddamn _disgusting_ creamed chicken again,” and waits for them to react.

Max, Susan, and his dad are all sitting around the kitchen table. They’d been quiet when he walked in. They are, in fact, having the disgusting creamed chicken. Susan thinks it’s amazing and they eat it about two times a week, three if they’re really unlucky. He walks into the room and does his thing, but they keep sitting around the table. Nobody looks up.

“Uh,” Billy says. “Fucking _hello_?” and usually he doesn’t swear in front of his dad once, let alone twice, but this feels like a special occasion. “Earth to the fucking Hargroves,” he tries next, and then he walks over to the table and starts waving in their faces.

“How was the arcade today, honey?” Susan says, and Billy is sure as shit that she’s not talking to _him_.

“It was fine,” Max says, but she’s staring at her plate. “We rented a movie, can we watch it after?”

“What movie?” his dad asks and his dad _never_ asks follow up questions about Billy’s stories unless he’s waiting for Billy to dig his hole a little deeper.

“Uh, something Steve recommended,” Max says. “He’s trying to make better recommendations now that he’s been working there for a while.”

“Well, after three months, I hope the recommendations have gotten better,” Neil says.

Three--three months?

Billy turns away from the family who is totally fucking ignoring him and looks at the calendar on the wall. _October_ it says. _October 15th, 1985._

Billy’s stomach drops. “Hello,” he says. “Hello! Max, Susan, come on. Come on. _Dad_ ,” Billy turns to Neil and jumps up and down, “Dad, come on, dad, _please_ ,” and he doesn’t know what to do, because they can’t fucking see him, “ _Dad_ ,” Billy begs, “Dad, please, come on, I’m right here, _dad_ \--” and he’s angry all of the sudden, because how dare they fucking leave him there for three months, how dare they not see him, how fucking dare his dad treat him like that his whole fucking _life_ and just--

Billy reaches out and smacks his father’s beer off the table, “Fucking _look at me_ ,” Billy snarls, and it’s angry, but his voice cracks too, “I’m your _son_! I’m _right here_ , fucking _look at me_ you piece of _shit_!”

But his dad just looks at his beer on the floor. “I thought I fixed the wobble on this table,” he says, and then he stands up and gets a paper towel. He cleans up the mess that he made himself.

After that, Billy does what any kid would do, upset and angry and _alone_ , he goes into his bedroom and shuts the door. Right after, he thinks he hears from the kitchen, “Did you hear something?” in Max’s voice.

But Susan says, “It was just the wind, honey. Now, what do you think of the chicken? I added a little less salt,” and so Billy lies down on his bed facing the wall and tries to figure out what the _fuck_ he’s supposed to do now. 

See, Billy Hargrove doesn’t die.

He just doesn’t really live, either.

~

His mother had always told him that things look better in the morning, but Billy is very sure that she’s wrong, because when he wakes up the next morning, things absolutely do not look any fucking better. 

The house is empty when he wakes up, but he’s not hungry and he doesn’t feel like he needs coffee, so he doesn’t bother with the kitchen. He _does_ want out of these clothes that he wore to walk so many fucking people to their deaths, so he roots around in his drawers for fresh jeans and a good top.

He fixes his hair in the mirror, but doesn’t know why he bothers. They can’t _see him_.

He wonders if _no one_ can see him. He hopes that’s not fucking true. Maybe it’s just his family. Maybe it’s just because they’re all such pieces of shit that they were glad he’s gone. It’s been three months and they haven’t even packed up his fucking _room_.

Billy swallows around the taste of salt in his throat and finishes buttoning up his shirt. At least he’s still got his necklace. His fingers curl around it and he thinks about his mom and he thinks about waking up on the floor of the mall, of that girl saying _she was pretty_ , of that feeling like a punch to his chest.

He snarls at his reflection and slams his hand into his mirror. The glass shatters and the impact hurts, but when he looks at his hand he isn’t bleeding.

“Well,” Billy says, “Fuck this,” and then he turns around and walks out of his empty fucking house.

He walks back into town and even though he’s not hungry, he goes to the diner. He waves at people in the windows, but no one reacts, not even when he knocks on them or shouts _fuck you motherfucker_ in their faces on the street. He flips off older women and swears in front of babies, and not _one fucking person_ responds to him. There was, he thinks, a time in his life when he would have fucking _loved this_.

He could have wreaked havoc and fucked with his dad, gotten him back for all the bullshit. He could have tormented Max and her weird little friends and really gotten her back for the bat thing. He could have done so many other things, bad things, unspeakable things, but--

He’s done those types of things, now, and in his wildest, angriest, darkest fucking daydreams, he’d never imagined it would make him feel this fucking _bad_.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, so he goes to the library.

He’s been here before. He’s been here a lot, actually. Barbara, who he calls Babs to watch her bluster about it, sometimes stays late, keeping the building open so Billy can sit in the far back corner, the chairs that no one except him seems to know about, and read until he was sleepy enough that he could just drive the Camaro home and go to sleep and not antagonize his dad or pick fights with strangers to let out some of that dark and coiled anger that was always laced between his ribs.

He wonders, as he walks through the stacks, trailing his fingers over the spines of books, what happened to his car. It had been on fire, when he’d rolled out of it, after he’d caught Steve Harrington’s eyes for the first time in months. If he had been alone in his head, he might’ve asked for help, but Steve Harrington had saved Nancy _again_ and they’d all gotten in the car and left while Billy’s head lulled against the window, his body slumped from the impact.

What happened to his car, after that? It’s probably gone. Neil probably scrapped it. _Asshole_.

Usually, when Billy slinks off to the library, he’s looking for some alone time and the cups of tea that Barbara brews him when he’s got the kind of bruising she can see. He reads novels that take him _away_ from Hawkins, Indiana, but that’s not what he’s here for today.

Billy heads over to the catalogue and starts with _g_ for _ghosts_ , then _p_ for _paranormal_ , _m_ for _magic_ , r for _resurrection_ , and he wanders the library to collect and compare books that look useful before he heads back to his corner and opens the first book, a pencil between his teeth as he works.

It’s quiet, in the library. Nobody bothers him. It’s mid-morning on a Wednesday, so he’s not surprised that there aren’t a lot of people here, but even if they were, he realizes that no one would bother him, because no one would know he’s even _there_. 

It’s the most alone he’s ever felt and Billy Hargrove has felt alone for a lot of his life, so that’s fucking saying something.

When he leaves a few hours later, he mostly thinks that he’s not hungry because ghosts don’t eat, but he’s not sure why he slept last night. People seem to agree that ghosts kind of do their own thing--and that’s only the people who agree they _exist_ , which is not a _huge number_ by any fucking means, but then, people probably don’t think that monsters made of goo who absorb the citizens of a small town in Indiana exist either, and Billy can tell you they sure as _shit_ fucking _do_ , so. 

It’s the late afternoon, but Hawkins is _still_ quiet. Billy wonders if everyone has left already, after what happened. He’s kind of surprised that Neil stayed, but maybe he didn’t have a choice. He’s never been great about holding down a job, and Billy guesses that post-exodus, there’s a high need for people who will do any kind of work--and take out their feelings of inferiority on their kid--in Hawkins.

He wanders the town until it’s just before sunset and he ends up near the arcade and the video store. He’s watching through the window when he sees Max again. It’s more jarring to see her here than it had been at home, where he’d had other things on his mind, like his asshole dad ignoring him, like Susan’s creamed chicken. It’s jarring to see her laughing with her friends, but it’s even more jarring, after he’s been watching for a while, to see these moments where someone says something and her face goes a little distant and drifty and she looks outside.

There’s something almost sad about her then, but one of her friends--Lucas, usually--always grabs her shoulder or her hand and draws her back in.

Noticeably absent from these Wednesday night gatherings, though, are the younger Byers boy and the girl who had told Billy his mom was pretty. 

Billy watches for a while, wondering if the two will show up, but they don’t. He can’t keep watching Max, anyway. It’s not like he can talk to her. It’s probably weird that he’s staring at this point.

Billy’s ready to go back to the house where no one sees him, to sleep and knock Neil’s beer off the table. He’s not sure how long he can milk that for joy, but he figures a while. If he has to be a ghost, he’ll haunt his dad and make him fucking _miserable_. That’ll--make things feel better, at least.

Billy’s on the way to walk home when he spots Steve Harrington through the window of the video store. He’s alone in there. Billy watches him for a few minutes through the window. He seems bored, but fine. _Alive_. Like people can _see him_. Billy remembers that moment right after Harrington hit the Camaro, when Billy was going to drive through Nancy, when they’d locked eyes for just a second after, when Billy hadn’t been himself.

Billy hadn’t wanted to kill a single one of those kids when he’d put his foot on the gas. He hadn’t wanted to kill Nancy Wheeler. He hadn’t been able to stop himself, but like he had that night last fall--nearly a year ago, now, given that it’s the middle of October--Harrington had stopped him from hurting them.

Billy’s not someone who’s used to feeling grateful, but he’s grateful to Harrington for that, and here’s a chance to say thank you and he won’t even have to see Harrington’s _reaction_ to it and nobody will ever know about it, so.

Billy pushes the door to the video store open to walk inside. The bell jingles, but he knows the score by now. He’s been a ghost for twenty-four hours. Harrington will look up, will see there’s nothing there. His brow will furrow for a moment, but he’ll move on. It might take him a moment longer to explain the door away, sure, given his experience with weird shit, but Billy figures that Harrington doesn’t have the attention span to dwell. He hadn’t in basketball, anyway.

What happens, though, is different: the door jingles and then Harrington looks up and he goes absolutely _white_.

“Billy?” he says, real slow, soft and a little fractured.

It takes Billy a second to recalibrate to this new reality in which one person can see him and that person is Steve Harrington, but Billy’s got a finely honed instinct for being a dick, so he lets the door shut behind him, walks right up to the counter, leans against it, and smiles with _all_ his teeth.

“What’s wrong, Harrington?” Billy asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”


	2. II

When Billy Hargrove walks into his video store, back from the dead, Steve’s working on a pro/con list on a notepad on the counter.

Well, it’s not _his_ video store, and technically he’s only got _cons_ on his list, but the fact remains that it is an extraordinarily boring day, as far as days go, and lately Steve is grateful for boring. 

He thinks, sometimes, of his delight when Dustin said he had a Russian spy message to translate and wonders what the fuck he was thinking. Boring is good. Boring doesn’t turn into basements or serums or monsters or anybody dying.

Steve--who woke up this morning before his alarm, a new and vaguely adult thing he is trying-- _likes boring_. He’d held that conclusion for nearly a month and so his pro/con list is equally boring. He’s chewing on the tip of the eraser and trying to think of a good pro when the bell above the door dings.

Steve looks up, but his _we’re closing in ten minutes, so whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast_ dies on the tip of his tongue because Billy Hargrove walks in. 

Steve drops his pencil. He can feel all the blood draining out of his face. He feels like he’s been hit by a train, in that moment, because the last time he’d seen Billy Hargrove had been right before Steve rammed his car into the side of the Camaro.

Well, okay, that’s the last time he’d _looked_ at Billy Hargrove. They’d made eye contact, Steve’s sure of that. He’s not sure, he supposes, whether it was Billy or the Mind Flayer who looked at him, but when Steve dreams it on loop, it’s always Billy.

The reason he dreams it on loop--and he uses dreams loosely and only because nightmares isn’t a verb--is that the last time he’d _seen_ Billy Hargrove had been right before Steve had driven away. There’d been this glimpse in the rearview mirror, Billy crumpled in his seat.

And then Billy Hargrove had died--a hero’s death maybe, but he was still dead. Is still dead.

That’s why Steve’s so confused about what’s happening right now.

“Billy?” Steve asks. He wishes he didn’t sound so terrified.

Billy walks up to him and gives this real sharp smile, leaning up against the counter like he’s about to ask Steve what the best porn is or something, just to fuck with him, and he says, “What’s wrong, Harrington?” and he says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Honestly, Steve’s pretty sure that it’s impressive all he _does_ is sit down hard--well, it’s a problem because there isn’t a _chair_ behind him, fucking Robin must’ve moved it again, so he lands on his ass on the floor and hits his head against the wall behind him--but it’s not like he _faints_ or anything.

From the other side of the counter, out of Steve’s view, Billy says, “Oh Jesus _Christ_ , please don’t be fucking dead, no one else can _see me_ ,” and so Steve’s pretty sure he must be dreaming when Billy walks around the counter and looks down at him, because what the _fuck_?

“Are you _haunting_ me?” Steve asks.

“That’s a technical term,” Billy says casually, leaning back, and he doesn’t offer to help Steve up when Steve starts to move. “I haven’t figured out the particulars yet.”

The bell dings and Steve scrambles to his feet, “ _Get down_ ,” he hisses at Billy, because he’s back from the _dead_ and they should probably have a plan before he wanders around scaring the shit out of everyone in Hawkins.

Mrs. Henderson blinks at Steve from just inside the door. “Steve, honey, is everything all right?” she asked, high pitched and nervous. Steve looks at Billy who grins back at him and shrugs.

“The bitch can’t see me,” Billy says.

Steve is going to _lose his mind_. He looks back at Mrs. Henderson to apologize for the _ingrate_ calling her a _bitch_ , but she’s looking at _Steve_ like he’s the crazy one, here, and--

_No one else can see me_.

Steve needs to sit down. He starts to, too, but at the last second remembers that he doesn’t have a chair there. It’s too late to stop his fall, though, and he’s going, going, _going_ and then--

Billy Hargrove catches him, a palm in the small of his back, the other between his shoulders, and pushes him back to his feet.

“What the fuck did I tell you about planting your feet?” Billy hisses, and his lips are so close to Steve’s ear that Steve can feel his _breath_.

Steve blinks at him.

“Steve, honey?” Mrs. Henderson asks, walking forward. “Do you want me to call your mother?”

Steve hasn’t really ever wanted _anyone_ to call his mother, like, _ever_ , because she’s important around town and talks to his _douchebag_ father. “No, no,” he says quickly. “Sorry, Mrs. H. I’m behind on closing and was just distracted. Looking for something for yourself or for you and Dustin tonight?”

“Both,” she says, sighing. “I’m so sorry. I know you’re about to close. I just got caught up at the salon and--” she pauses, here.

Steve smiles, and it’s warm. He _loves_ Mrs. H. “Your hair looks great,” he says smoothly, “nails too,” he adds, catching the bright blue polish as she pats her newly set curls. “Don’t worry about it. For you, I’ll stay open all night.”

“And I thought _I_ was the one getting all the moms hot and bothered,” Billy says with that same sharp smile.

“Shut _up_ ,” Steve hisses.

“What was that, dear?” Mrs. Henderson asks, already starting toward the new releases.

“Oh, nothing, just--talking to myself,” Steve says.

Honestly, she’s a good distraction. He helps her pick out the movies. For her, _The Secret Admirer_ because she hasn’t seen it and Steve’s sure that she’ll like it and for Dustin some classic horror.

“Oh, I don’t like ghost stories, though,” she says.

Steve glances at Billy, who’s leaning against the counter and watching with this kind of practiced disinterest that Steve suspects means he’s watching _closely_. “I don’t either,” Steve says, shooting a pointed glance at Billy. “But don’t worry, Mrs. H. This one isn’t too scary.”

She thanks him and pays at the counter. He gives her his discount--he always does--and tells her to have a good night. He can see a group of teenagers looking at the door, and Steve doesn’t want to _deal with that_ and anyway they’re about to close, so he flips the sign aggressively and locks the door.

When he turns around, Billy’s still there. “What do you _want_?” Steve asks.

Billy picks his notepad up off the desk. Steve wonders, a little idly, if the teenagers outside see something _floating_. “Steve Harrington’s Pro/Con List,” Billy reads it like a title. Steve can hear the capitalization in his voice, “for Going to Community College.” Billy’s eyes flicker up, “I thought you didn’t get into tech.”

Steve’s cheeks flame and he stomps forward and snatches the pad out of Billy’s hand. “I didn’t. _Whatever_ ,” Steve says.

“There aren’t any pros on that list,” Billy says.

Steve had--on a few occasions, like when he got together with the guys to play basketball, or when he’d gone to the Homecoming football game to watch Robin play _an instrument_ \--missed Billy. Not like, in any real way. They hadn’t known each other well, beyond the occasional interaction because of the kids. Really, they’d only ever talked during basketball. Once the season ended, they’d gone their mostly separate ways. The closest Steve had been to Billy had been when Billy was kicking the absolute _shit_ out of him, so. 

Still, a classmate had died. A teammate. A friend’s older brother. There’s some sadness with that. It’s complicated.

The point is, right now, when Billy says _there aren’t any pros on that list_? Steve doesn’t miss him _at all_.

“You’re an asshole,” Steve says, and he grabs his backpack and cuts through the store.

Billy follows him.

Steve turns around, “Oh my _god_ ,” he says. “What do you _want_?”

Billy blinks at him. “Y’know, Harrington,” he says, “I feel like that reaction is a _little_ unfair. I’m the one who’s _fucking dead_ and who _no one else can see_. Sorry if I’m such a fucking _bother_. You know what, _fuck you_.”

And then, in what Steve is sure is meant to be a moment of ghostly badassery, Billy turns around and walks _directly_ into a shelf of videos. It falls over and the movies fall off, and Billy stares.

“What the _fuck_?” Steve asks.

“I’ve never actually tried to do that before,” Billy admits, still sort of looking at the shelf. “If I’m a ghost, shouldn’t I be able to walk through shit?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Steve says, but he has to put his backpack down so that he can pick the movies up off the floor and start putting them back.

Billy’s quiet, but after a minute or two, he starts to help. Steve pauses to glance at him, surprise flickering over his face, but Billy doesn’t say anything except, “I’m not doing all the fucking work here, Harrington, it’s your job,” and so Steve goes back to putting the movies away.

When they’re done, Billy follows Steve out the back door. Steve turns the light off and locks it, then looks at Billy.

“Billy,” Steve says, “What do you want?”

“No one else can see me, Harrington,” Billy snaps, but he shrugs, too. It strikes Steve, in that moment, how lonely that must be. It’s not like Billy had had a lot of friends to _start_. “And,” Billy continues, before Steve can say something, “I’m a really shitty fucking ghost. What am I supposed to do? Haunt my asshole father for the rest of his life? Haunt _you_?”

You only haunt people, Steve thinks, who’ve done you wrong in life. He wonders if that means Billy remembers the moment that they’d locked eyes. He wonders if that means Billy remembers the way that Steve had driven off without him.

Steve shrugs, “I don’t know, man,” he says. “What do you _want_ to do?”

And Billy looks at him like no one has ever asked him that question before. He tips his head back and looks up at the sky, the stars, running his tongue along his lower lip.

“I don’t fucking know,” Billy tells the sky. “I don’t want to be _alone_.”

Steve could probably just like, run away and leave him here, or something, but that seems like a really shitty thing to do so he says. “Okay. Well. I’m going home, so,” and pretends he doesn’t see the way Billy’s face twitches into something almost like hurt before if twists into _pissed_ , “Hold your fucking horses, Christ,” Steve says, showing Billy his palms. “Why don’t you like, come with me? We can try and figure it out.”

He’s expecting something biting, but Billy shrugs and says, “Sure,” and then follows Steve to his car.

Steve wonders if forgiveness is that easy. He thinks it probably isn’t. He thinks he probably has to say _sorry_ , first.

~

They find out pretty quickly that Billy can still get drunk.

“Do you think you’ll pee?” Steve asks, sprawled on the floor of the living room, “Or do your ghostly particles just absorb nutrients?”

“First of all,” Billy says, and he’s standing, a bottle of _very nice bourbon_ clutched in his palm. He waves it around a lot, Steve notices. He’s been _pacing_. It’s honestly a lot for Steve to follow. All the back and forth is making him dizzy. “First of all,” Billy repeats.

“Already said that--”

“Shut _up_. _First_ of all, there are _no_ nutrients in alcohol.”

Steve blinks. Nods. “That is--you’re _right_ \--” he says, and he wishes after he says it that he sounded a little less delighted about it. 

“Second of all,” Billy says, “I’m gonna go take a leak _right now_!”

And then he walks out of the slider doors, to--Steve concludes--take a piss in Steve’s yard. “Ugh,” Steve says. “Gross,” and then he rolls onto his side and then to his feet to sprawl out on the couch. “Wash your hands!” he yells at Billy when he comes back in.

Billy does, so that’s. Something.

“Good listening,” Steve tells him as he walks back into the room. He hears Billy’s steps falter and turns, wondering if ghosts can trip when they’re drunk. Billy’s staring at him. “What?” Steve says, because there’s that weird look on Billy’s face again.

It disappears pretty quickly. Billy’s mouth twists, “I’m not one of your little kid friends,” Billy snaps. “Don’t fucking talk to me like you’re my babysitter.”

“Ghost-sitter,” Steve muses, because he’s drunk, “I’m _drunk_ ,” he tells Billy.

Billy sighs. “Me too,” he says, and then they both look around the room because the bottle of bourbon is gone.

“Where--” Steve starts.

“Must’ve left it outside,” Billy says, and then he stumbles over toward Steve. He lifts up Steve’s ankles.

“Hey!” Steve protests, because apparently he’s only talking in one to three word phrases tonight, fuck, he’s so drunk.

“Stop whining, _Jesus_ , I don’t get you,” Billy says, and he drops to the couch to sit, but puts Steve legs back across his lap. That’s all right, Steve decides. “You have this big fucking house. You have all those kids who like, fucking lick your ankles, or whatever, like little dogs--”

“Those _bite_ ankles,” Steve says.

“Yeah, well, I bet Henderson bites your ankles, so I’m still right,” Billy’s quiet though, and now he’s got a hand on Steve’s ankle, his thumb pressing on the bone. “What have you got to be _sad_ about?”

“I’m not _sad_ ,” Steve protests.

“Yeah you fucking are,” Billy says. “I’m not fucking stupid, Harrington. I’m just dead.”

And then they’re both quiet, because there’s not a lot that you can say after that. “I think,” Steve says. “I think I should go to bed,” and he means Billy, too, he means the guest room, or whatever, but Billy’s face crumbles, twists, and then he shoves Steve’s legs off his lap so hard Steve nearly falls off the couch.

“Whatever,” Billy says. “I don’t know what I fucking expected.”

And then he walks out of the house.

Steve stares at the place where Billy had been for a long time, after that. He’s thinking about _I’m just dead_ and _I don’t want to be alone_ and the way that Billy’s face always crumbles, just a little, before he gets angry.

He’s thinking about how warm Billy’s hand had been on his ankle, which seems weird for a ghost, but so far, Billy’s a _terrible_ ghost, so maybe it’s normal for him, or something.

Steve goes to bed and he dreams that he rams that stupid fucking car into Billy’s Camaro over and over and over.

~

When he wakes up, Billy’s sitting in his window, smoking.

“Ghosts don’t smoke,” is the first thing Steve says, which is not any of the things he meant to say, like _why are you in my room?_ Or _what the fuck what if I was naked_? Or _What do you want from me_?

“This ghost does,” Billy says. “I stole them,” he adds. “Picked them up off the shelf and walked out of the store. I kind of thought that people would scream about it, or whatever, floating cigarette pack, but nope. Not one single person reacted.” That’s not where Steve expects the story to stop, because he still doesn’t understand why Billy’s here, but Billy doesn’t say anything else. He just smokes, kind of sullenly, perched in Steve’s window. 

Steve watches him for a little while, but when Billy doesn’t say anything, he gets up and goes to take a shower. It’s there that he has the idea for the first time. It hits him hard and he blinks, drumming his fingers on the tile.

He comes out of the shower not long after, his hair damp, a towel around his waist. Billy’s still in the window, which is good. Steve had been a little afraid that he was going to leave or something. He’d left last night, anyway, but he’d come back. He must’ve meant what he said, Steve thinks. He must’ve really meant that he didn’t want to be alone.

“I think I have an idea,” Steve says, adjusting the towel around his waist.

Billy turns to look at him and the movement is slow, purposeful. Steve takes a half-step back, because he’s spent all this time thinking Billy was a ghost, but there’s something about the way Billy looks at him now that echoes a totally different kind of monster. Just as fast as he’d seen it, though, it falls away. Billy taps ash of the end of his cigarette. “Would you like to share with the class?” Billy asks.

Robin had asked him that, too. Steve goes still, his back against the wall now. Maybe he should’ve shared with the class in that hallway. Maybe if he and Dustin hadn’t been trying so hard to keep secrets then people wouldn’t have died. All those people. So many people.

The person sitting in front of him now, for instance.

_I’m sorry_ , Steve doesn’t say, looking at Billy, like if he doesn’t say it out loud neither of them will know that he did something wrong that night, like if he doesn’t say it out loud he’ll keep the nightmares separate from reality.

Steve had liked how boring his life was. Now Billy Hargrove is back from the dead.

“Earth to Harrington,” Billy says, and he’s standing in front of Steve now, snapping his fingers in his face. “When the fuck did you get chest hair?” he asks.

Steve’s thrown. He looks down like he doesn’t know what’s on his chest. “Uh,” Steve says. “I--it looks good under the Scoops uniform, and--”

And he doesn’t wear that uniform anymore. He’s pretty sure that he _burned it_. He doesn’t really remember. The first two weeks after that night are--a bit of a blurr. His parents had even come home. They’d stayed, too, for nearly a week.

“Harrington,” Billy says slowly, “I don’t actually fucking care. What’s your idea?”

Steve chews on his lip. He walks over to his desk, drops the towel, and tugs on a pair of boxers now that he’s mostly dry. “Okay,” he says, turning back around, a notepad in hand. It’s the same one from his pro/con list. “Okay, so like, in movies and stuff, the ghosts are always--they have unfinished business, right? And then they cross over to the great beyond, or whatever?”

Billy’s face twitches, but he nods. “Sure,” he says. He’s not telling Steve something, but Steve doesn’t know what it is, and Billy doesn’t offer, and they don’t really know each other like that, so.

“I think we just have to find your unfinished business,” Steve says, “And then like, you’re good to go. Poof! Pearly gates, all that good shit.”

“And what?” Billy says, leaning against the wall, “You think that you’re the only one who can see me because you’re _specially equipped_ to help me finish my business, Harrington? That it?”

Steve looks down at the notepad. He’ll pretend that he’s hiding from the stinging nastiness of Billy’s tone, but he’s hiding from the reason he actually thinks that he’s the only person he can see Billy.

It’s a kind of penance, probably. A righting of his own wrongs. He gets to spend the rest of his life remembering that he drove away from Billy that night.

He can justify it all he wants. They weren’t _close_. They weren’t _friends_. They weren’t _anything_ , but--

But Steve knew Billy Hargrove. He’d known him since that first day he’d walked into Hawkins High. In another life, maybe, they might’ve been friends.

This is, Steve guesses, a _kind_ of other life. Maybe they can be friends now. “I think I can help you,” is what Steve settles on. “If you let me.”

Billy’s laugh is bitter. “Help me _what_?” he bites. “Help me finish my business? Help me go to the great beyond?” he laughs again and he stubs his cigarette out on Steve’s bedroom wall. It leaves a burn mark on the wallpaper. It’s also probably unsafe.

Steve nods, excited now, even in the face of whatever Billy’s feeling. “Yeah,” he says. “Billy, I really think we can do it.”

“You really think we can do it,” Billy echoes, and he’s mocking Steve with his tone. He’s not looking at Steve, either, although it takes Steve a second to realize it. Billy’s doing a practiced stare. He’s looking somewhere to the left of Steve’s head. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Billy, if you just--”

“If I just _what_?” Billy snarls, and now he’s looking at him, and he’s _pissed_ , but there’s no echo of the monster on his face at all. He’s just Billy, face and eyes and body language. “If I just _finish my business_ and _go beyond the veil_?” he laughs again. “Harrington,” Billy says, “You’re so fucking _stupid_.”

Steve’s on his feet. “You don’t have to be such a _dick_ ,” he bites out. “I’m trying to _help you_ \--”

“Help me?” Billy throws his head back and laughs, and he’s all bite, all snarl now. “Help me? Harrington, where the _fuck_ do you think I’m gonna _go_?”

Steve freezes.

“ _There_ it is,” Billy says, and he brings his hands together in a slow clap. “The big reveal. Where is Billy Hargrove gonna go? Well let’s _see_ ,” he steps up, until he’s in Steve’s face. “Heather,” he says, ticking off one finger, “Mrs. Driscoll,” he says, a second, “Tom,” he says, “Janet,” he says, “Dave--he was a kid, you know that? A little fucking kid,” and now he’s got five fingers in Steve’s face. “You want the rest of their names?” Billy asks, his voice low. “I could tell you every single one. I could tell you what they were wearing when they died. I could tell you what they said to me, right before it happened. You want all of that? You want to _carry_ that?”

Steve’s cheeks are hot. He looks away.

Billy laughs. “I didn’t fucking _think_ so, Harrington,” he says. “But I don’t have that goddamn luxury, do I? Because I did it. I did _all_ of it. Every single fucking one--” and Billy stops talking then, because his voice breaks, and his mouth twists, and he doesn’t quite look away fast enough to hide his red rimmed eyes or the tears that spill over his lashes. “So I don’t _want_ your fucking help,” Billy says, “Because I _know_ what’s waiting for me. I just want to go the fuck _back to sleep_ ,” and he whirls around and slams his fist into Steve’s bedroom wall, which Steve’s dad is going to be pissed about, honestly.

That doesn’t seem like the most important thing right now.

“Billy,” Steve says, a little at a loss for words. “Billy, that wasn’t your fault--”

“I didn’t _stop it_!” Billy snarls, halfway to a scream. He whirls around to face Steve. “I didn’t stop it! I couldn’t stop it! I just _let it all happen_!”

“Billy--”

“You know what the fucking _worst_ part is?” Billy asks, and his voice is low again, dangerous, “The part I fixate on? Because I’m such a selfish piece of _shit_?” he asks. “When I crashed the Camaro? When that thing grabbed me? When I spent those _last seconds_ as myself? Alone in my head?” Billy stops for a second and sucks in a ragged breath, “I didn’t even scream for help,” he says. “What was the fucking point? I knew no one was coming.” He turns away. “I’m out, Harrington. See you never,” and then he walks out of Steve’s bedroom.

Steve follows.

He follows him down the stairs. He follows him out the door. He follows him into the yard. “You’re _out_?” Steve asks, raising his voice so that Billy can hear him, even as he marches away. “Where are you gonna go?” Steve asks. “Let me _help you_.”

“I don’t _need your help_!” Billy snarls. “I don’t need your _fucking help_! I don’t need _anyone’s_ help! I don’t--”

His voice breaks again. Steve watches as he presses his lips into a thin line and looks away. A muscle in Billy’s jaw ticks. “I wasn’t _thinking about it_ ,” Billy says through gritted teeth. “That was the plan. I wasn’t going to think about it. And now look what you’ve made--look what I’m doing! I’m fucking thinking about it! And none of _them_ get to come back and finish their business, so why do I?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, honest. He realizes that he’s standing in his front yard, wearing nothing but his boxers, talking to a person no one else can see. His neighbors are definitely going to call his parents. “I don’t know, but I think you want answers, right? You’re asking a lot of questions. I’m the only one who can see you, so I’m the only one who can get you answers. Let me help you.”

“Yeah, Steve Harrington, real genius, definitely going to get me answers about this paranormal bullshit.”

“I _am_ ,” Steve says, “You _asshole_. You wanna know why?”

And Steve knows he’s got him, then, because Billy’s standing in the middle of his yard, but he scrubs at his face for a second and then crosses his arms, “Why?” he asks, when it becomes clear Steve’s not going to say anything else until Billy does.

“Because I know who to ask. Let me get dressed. Go wait in my car,” and he throws Billy the keys before he heads into the house. He figures Billy could use some time alone to get himself together.

“Harrington!” Billy calls after him. “What are we _doing_?”

“Road trip!” Steve yells back.


	3. III

Billy sits in Harrington’s BMW and watches a bird hop around on the hood. He waves at it, but it doesn’t even flinch. He claps his hands and yells at it, “Come on, come _on_ ,” he says, snarling. He turns the key in the ignition and rolls down the window and _glares_ , reaching out and swiping at it with his hand. “Come _on_ ,” Billy says, maybe a little desperate, maybe a little angry, maybe a little terrified, but the fucking bird keeps chirping and hopping around on the hood of the car. “I hope you _fucking_ scratch it,” Billy bites out.

He slumps back in the seat to find Harrington watching him from just outside the house. Billy flips him off and crosses his arms, sinking back against the soft leather and staring at the stupid fucking bird. When Harrington gets in the car and they start driving, it finally flies away. 

Even a goddamn _bird_ can’t see him.

The idea of being a ghost hasn’t _once_ been fun, not really. He thinks, again, that old him--the one who was angry and ripped away from his _home_ , that him, he might have liked it, but--but now? Now he’s seen people die. He’s had a monster inside his head. Honestly, Billy just kind of wants to have a conversation with someone.

His options, though, are limited. He turns his head to the side to watch Harrington drive. He’s a confident driver, but that surprises Billy, who thinks mostly that Harrington just always seems like he’s waiting for someone to say _good job_ with everything he does. He seems happy in his car. Billy can understand that feeling. His car had always been where he felt happiest, too.

_Can I call you Karen_?

_Crash_.

Billy blinks and looks away from the windshield, out the window instead. “Where are we going?” he asks. 

“Right now? McDonald’s,” Steve says. “After that--I told you, we’re going on a road trip.”

“Harrington,” Billy says, real slow, “I’m not fucking _stupid_. Where is our _final destination_?”

Harrington pauses for a second and then he starts to hum. His humming is _terrible_ , but Billy realizes eventually that it’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

“You know what your problem is?” Billy asks, rolling his eyes. “It’s that you think that’s _funny_.”

“It’s a _little_ funny,” Harrington protests.

“I’m going to _Hell_ , Harrington,” Billy says, finally looking back over at him.

Harrington meets his gaze and his expression isn’t comical or joking. It’s serious. It makes sense to Billy, in that moment, why those kids pulled Harrington into their mess with all those monsters. That look is pretty fucking reassuring, even if Billy’s never going to admit it. “Billy,” he says, “That’s a really rude way to talk about McDonald’s.”

That one makes Billy laugh.

They’re in line for the drive thru when Harrington says, “But seriously,” and draws Billy’s attention away from the newest bird he’s trying to get to notice him. 

“What?” Billy asks, turning toward him. He’s surprised by how _not angry_ he feels about the whole thing. He thinks even earlier he’d just been _sad_ and Billy knows better than to be sad or scared or hurting, so he’d been angry, but Harrington is making it pretty fucking hard to be _angry_ with him, so.

“I don’t think you’re going to Hell,” Harrington says. “You didn’t do it. It was a monster. It wasn’t your fault. Besides, aren’t you Catholics all about asking forgiveness or something, whatever that is?”

Billy’s quiet, for a second. He wonders how Harrington knows that he’s a Catholic. He shifts so that he can curl his fingers around his necklace, tracing it with his thumb. “I think a priest would need to be able to hear me to take my confession,” Billy says. “I think even a priest would call the cops if I told him what I’d done.”

Harrington’s quiet again. A car behind them honks and he jumps. Maybe he’s not as confident as Billy thought he was. Once, Billy would’ve rolled down the window and told the honker exactly where to stuff it. Now it wouldn’t matter. No one can see Billy. Not his dad, not birds, not a priest, and not the asshole behind them.

Just Steve Harrington. He’s the only one. Billy doesn’t get it. 

Harrington puts his foot on the gas, “Maybe like--and this would be a _last_ resort--I could get ordinances, or whatever.”

“Ordained,” Billy corrects, but he’s smiling.

A chirpy voice welcomes them to McDonald’s through a little speaker. It reminds Billy of Max and her walkie talkies. It reminds Billy of Max and her weird, distant sadness. “You want a coke?” Harrington asks, pulling him out of thinking about that dinner table, where his dad had asked Max about her day.

“Yeah,” Billy says, quiet. “Sure. Sounds good.”

Harrington orders the two cokes and then drives up to the window to get them. Billy watches the girl--Ashley, he thinks, Ashley Prior, she was in his lab group in science last year--go from bored to very interested as she notices who pulls up to her window. Or, Billy thinks, watching, what he pulls up _in_.

“ _Steve_ ,” Ashley says, leaning all the way out the window to hand him the cokes. “These are on the house,” she says with a big, bright smile. “You just extra thirsty or are you meeting up with someone?” she pops her gum.

Billy feels an _infuriating_ urge to throw one of the cokes right back at her, but he’s not totally sure about the logistics of how that would work, so he doesn’t do it.

“Uh,” Harrington says, and Billy waits for him to follow it up with something, but he _doesn’t_.

“Tell her you’re meeting up with someone,” Billy supplies, rolling his eyes. He wants his fucking _soda_ , but he’s still not sure about the logistics of the floating shit, or whatever.

“I’m meeting up with someone,” Harrington says, and he’s _almost_ smooth by the end of it.

“You’re going to go drive around for a while,” Billy continues. “Maybe she’d like to hang out next weekend if you have time?”

Harrington’s shoulders twitch like he’s going to whip around and look at Billy, so Billy reaches out and grabs him, holding him there, leaning in the window to look at Ashley in the restaurant. She pops her gum.

Harrington smiles. Billy can see it in the reflection of the window. “We’re gonna go drive around,” Harrington says, “But if I have time next weekend, maybe we can do something?”

“I’d like that,” Ashley says, grinning, “Call me, yeah?”

The guy behind them honks again. “Harrington,” Billy grinds out, and he’s gratified when Harrington sticks his hand out the window to flip him off. 

“I’ll call you,” Harrington says, grinning. “Bye, Ashley,” he adds.

“Bye, Steve!” she says, leaning her chin on her palm and waving as Harrington drives away.

He pulls over on the side of the road to hand Billy his coke and deal with the straws. “I don’t fucking get that,” he says, and he sounds put out. Billy’s going to ignore it, but then Harrington keeps going. “I tried to talk to her _all summer_ at Scoops, and she was just all _I don’t have time, sorry_ , or _ha ha funny_ and making eyes at her friends!”

“It’s the car,” Billy points out. “Scoops says ‘I don’t have the money to take you out on a good date.’ This car says, ‘Baby, I can treat you _right_ ,’” Billy wiggles his eyebrows when he says it, and Harrington laughs. 

“Shit,” he says, “You’re right. I have to tell Robin that. We can drive around and pick up girls together.”

“Together?” Billy asks.

“Uh,” Harrington says, looking flustered. “She’s like, into girls?”

Billy thinks of California and the secrets it keeps on its beaches. He looks away for a second. “Okay,” Billy says, “First of fucking all, like, _don’t_ tell people that shit _for her_? You don’t get to _do that_ , asshole.”

“Oh,” Harrington says, “Shit, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Billy says. “I mean, this time. I can’t actually tell anyone because I’m, y’know, _dead_? But don’t do that shit. Especially in Indi-fucking-ana.”

“Right,” Harrington agrees. “Noted.”

“Second of all,” Billy starts--

“You use _first of all_ and _second of all_ a _lot_ ,” Harrington points out.

Billy grits his teeth, “ _Second of all_ ,” he continues, like he hadn’t heard Harrington at _all_ , “You need to like, take her somewhere _not_ Hawkins to cruise for girls, are you fucking _stupid_?”

Harrington blinks at him, “It’s not like I know all the hot--” he stumbles over the next word.

Billy rolls his eyes. “Gay. You can say _gay_ , Harrington.”

“The hot--gay--spots around _the country_ , Billy.”

Billy doesn’t tell Harrington that he could name a few to start him off. He shrugs, “Not my fucking problem. Can we get on the _road_?”

Harrington nods and Billy takes his coke and drinks it, watching out the window as the sign says _Leaving Hawkins_. He rolls down the window and spits at it as they drive by.

~

It probably hasn’t been _that_ long, but Billy feels like they’ve been driving for _years_ when Harrington finally fucking pulls off the highway and starts driving through a little residential neighborhood. He keeps looking at the map he’s got propped awkwardly between them. He won’t let Billy help him with it, which he thinks is _stupid_ , but whatever.

At least he’s letting Billy choose the radio station, which kept Billy busy for a little while, but he got bored, which has led them to the conversation they’ve now been having for the last thirty minutes.

“Come _on_ ,” Billy insists. “Just let me _drive_.”

“Oh my god, no?” Harrington says. “That’s not happening.”

“Why _not_?” Billy grumbles. “It’s not like--”

“Because either people are going to see a car with _no driver_ or people aren’t going to see the _car_ and we’ll get hit or people are going to see me _floating_ and sitting like I’m _in a car_ and all of those are _bad things_.”

Billy thinks the last one sounds like a _hilarious_ thing, honestly, but he sort of gets where Harrington is coming from. They haven’t figured out the rules of what Billy can and can’t do. Or, well, he can do _anything_ , he supposes. They just haven’t figured out what everyone else _sees_.

“Ugh,” Billy grumbles. “Okay. I want to go through the list again.”

Harrington is squinting at street signs, but he nods and waves a hand at Billy.

Billy fumbles for the notepad he’d found in the back of the car and flips it past Harrington’s _pro/con_ list to his own _Ghost Rules_ list.

“So, I _can_ drink,” Billy says. “I can smoke. I want cigarettes? I haven’t eaten yet, but honestly, I’m pretty fucking hungry, can we find a diner or something? Why didn’t you get burgers? I can sleep. I can get drunk. I can take a leak. I can talk to you and touch you,” and here, Harrington shoots him a warning glance and Billy grins. He’d spent a lot of time on this drive _testing_ that one out by jabbing Harrington repeatedly as he drove, “We’re still waiting to see if I can give you bruises, but like, my feeling is _yes_ ,” he says. 

“But,” Harrington cuts in, “No one else can see you or talk to you. They can’t feel you when you touch them. They can’t see the objects that you pick up, we think, given the cigarette thing, but we need to test it, and--” he shrugs, “You’re not _hurt_ at all, right?”

Billy hasn’t let Harrington _see_ that, or anything, but he’d talked about it. Billy _isn’t_ hurt at all. No gaping wounds. No blood. It makes more sense now that he knows how long it’s been, but he doesn’t really think the scarring should be as--as _complete_ as it is? He shouldn’t be _healed_ yet. Something went through his _chest_.

He hasn’t shown them to Harrington yet. They’re pretty fucking ugly, but--he will. Eventually.

He doesn’t want to scare him away, and then he’s not totally sure why he thinks _that_ of all things would be what goddamn did it, given that Harrington is currently driving his ghostly ass self somewhere to get answers, which reminds Billy--

“Where the fuck are we _going_?” because Harrington _still_ hasn’t told him.

Now, Harrington looks a little shifty. “We’re almost there,” he says, carefully, and then he turns left without using his goddamn turn signal, and Billy is annoyed by that in a way he shouldn’t be. It’s not like there’s anyone on the road. 

The house Harrington pulls up in front of is small, but well kept. It’s a nice shade of blue, Billy thinks, with a deep green door. It’s the kind of house that he thinks he might have dreamed up, once, when they were in that shitty one bedroom apartment in California, when his dad couldn’t find work, before it all got really bad. This is the kind of house that he would’ve pictured, with a stone path that leads up to the front door, with a mailbox that’s a slightly different shade of green from the door at the end of the driveway, charming, a little homey.

Billy doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but Harrington motions for him to get out of the car, and Billy does. He wonders what that looks like to people, if they see. Do they see the door open? Does the car disappear? 

They’re halfway up the path and Billy is admiring the way the trees behind the house have gone orange and red and gold for autumn when the door opens.

“ _Steve’s here_!” exclaims a delighted and familiar voice. Billy turns his attention from the trees to the green door. Leaning against the white frame, now, is a grinning Will Byers.

Billy’s startled. He hadn’t expected to be brought _here_ , but there’s Will, looking happy to see an old friend in his pretty blue house. He’d had the monster inside him once, Billy thinks. His eyes flicker over Will, but there’s no sign of it that Billy can see. He’d survived, Billy realizes, and Billy hadn’t. He doesn’t even mind that Will doesn’t see him, although there’s a part of him that had been hoping, maybe, that he’d be able to because they’d--they’d have a connection, or something.

He can’t see Billy, though, only Harrington. Will leaves the door open as he runs out of the house and throws his arms around him, hugging him tight. Billy watches, pushing some of his curls out of his face and feeling kind of awkward.

He can feel Harrington looking at him now. He looks kind of guilty.

Billy doesn’t get why until another set of footsteps sound at the door. He looks up, expecting Mrs. Byers or Jonathan, maybe. Maybe Nancy because maybe Harrington dragged him all the way out here to use her brain or her booksmarts. Maybe he doesn’t _know_ that Billy had read every book in the library on ghosts and the list they made on the drive _still_ has more information, but--

It’s not any of those people. It’s the girl with the big eyes. She’d worn that shirt from the Gap. She’d been in his head and he’d grabbed her wrist. She’d said _I want to know what happened_ and he’d told her. She’d seen his mom.

Like him, she’d thought his mom was really pretty.

Billy’s heart pounds in his chest. He’ll think that’s weird, eventually, and add it to the list, and rationalize that maybe it’s just how his ghostly brain perceives the feeling that creeps over him then, rather than an actual beating heart. It’s panic, he knows, and it prickles over his skin, because she’s looking at Harrington, and then she’s looking _right at him_.

“Can she see me?” he says, talking to Harrington. “Can you _see me_?” Billy asks, and she’s still looking at him, and so he takes a few steps forward. “Answer me!” he yells, wondering if she’s processing, if she’s remembering he almost killed her. “Answer me! Tell me! Can you see--can you _fucking see me_ , just tell me, plea--”

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and her gaze slides away from Billy and back to Harrington. Billy realizes all at once that she’d been looking where Harrington was, perceptive, maybe, but not--not seeing him at all.

He crashes to his knees on the ground and slams his fist into the grass.

He’s startled by a hand on his back a few heartbeats later. He’s flinching, angry, snarling, _scared_ , but it’s just Harrington. He’s crouching next to Billy in the grass. His palm feels warm through Billy’s t-shirt. Honestly, it’s a little cold out, Billy thinks. He should’ve worn a jacket, but he didn’t know ghosts could _get_ cold, so. 

“What’s he doing?” Will’s saying to the girl, but all Billy can think about is Harrington’s hand on his shoulder, the way his thumb is moving, back and forth.

“I think we can get answers, here,” Harrington tells him. “I’m sorry--I didn’t. I thought she might be able to see you, but I think we can still get answers.”

Billy’s shoulders slump. All the anger drains out of him. It takes so much _energy_ to feel angry, he thinks, and Harrington squeezes his shoulder as he droops. _I thought she might be able to see you_ , Harrington says.

“She’s the only one who ever fucking _saw_ me,” Billy bites out, and that’s true at least in Hawkins, Indiana. “If she can’t see me now, no one--”

“I can see you,” Harrington points out, cutting him off. “There’s gotta be a reason for that, Billy. C’mon, let’s just--let’s just go inside.”

The girl had been silent in response to Will’s question, but they both perk up when they hear Harrington say _I can see you_ and say _Billy_.

When Billy looks up, they’re looking at each other.

“I think you should come inside,” the girl says.

“Harrington,” Billy says, breathing through his nose, out through his mouth. “What’s her name?”

“Her name is El,” Harrington says. 

Billy looks up at El who motions them inside. He’s still looking at her when Harrington grabs his hand and pulls him to his feet. He’s still looking at her when he’s ushered inside, when Harrington doesn’t let go of him, not for one second, not for one step up the path through that green door into that little blue house. 

El, Billy thinks as Harrington motions for him to sit down on a couch. He drops his face into his hands once he sits. Her name is _El_.

Harrington’s palm is on his back, again. 

She can’t see him.

_Shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled like, more questions about McDonald's than I am totally comfortable admitting to, here, but did you KNOW they didn't start selling coffee until 1993 (I think? I honestly didn't read that hard, but it convinced me to write them getting sodas instead).
> 
> Anyway, I am also @lymricks on tumblr which I forgot to say in this story, so like, come hang out with me!


	4. IV

Inside the house, the air is light like there’s a breeze through an open window, although it had been chilly, but not too cold outside. Steve focuses on that, because even if no one else can see Billy Hargrove, Steve can, and his expression is tight at the corners and reminds Steve of a fist in the face, over and over and over.

El is quiet in front of them as she leads them down the hallway to the living room. It is, Steve thinks, presumably a _normal_ sized hallway, but the walk down it feels endless, Billy’s breath ragged behind him, like he’s holding something back. Steve doesn’t know if that means tears or violence. He doesn’t much want to find out. 

Billy had felt warm, beneath his palm. Tangible. _Real_. Steve doesn’t know how ghosts work, this being his first experience with one, but he thinks this is a special kind of cruel, to let Billy be in the world, to make it feel like he’s really here, but take it away any time he gets too used to it.

That’s what it feels like. Even if El had never been able to see Billy, even if that was never going to happen, it feels to Steve like something being taken away, and it’s so unfair. After everything, after all that death, and Billy’s just suspended, a shadow--Steve’s shadow, and maybe just as nasty as Peter Pan’s was, but Steve can’t shake the feeling he’s not as nasty as he _seems_.

Steve thinks of a collision and of bright blue eyes on his for a heartbeat before he ran away. 

They sit on the couch and Billy sags forward, his head in his hands. Only Steve can see him, so only Steve notices how he droops, the way he pushes his hair back, scrubs at his face before he finally sits up.

“I really thought she’d fucking be able to see me,” Billy says, and Steve glances at him, and then at the rest of the room, like maybe they heard him, too.

El and Will are arguing quietly about whether or not waffles should be offered to their guests. Steve catches enough of their terse whispers to know they can’t decide if Billy can eat and so they don’t know if it’s rude.

Steve doesn’t say anything, either about Billy’s comment or the argument, until after a long moment of glaring directly into each other’s eyes, Will and El say, in unison, “Would you like something to eat?”

And then, like he hadn’t heard their argument, Billy says, “I want a fucking eggo waffle,” but El and Will keep looking at Steve, keep looking at him like he’s going to answer the question.

Steve sets a hand between Billy’s shoulder blades and rubs. “We could both eat,” he says.

He realizes when they leave that he’s relieved they don’t think he’s _crazy_. It would, he realizes, be very fucking _easy_ to assume that Steve Harrington had finally lost it, that all of this had been too much for him, that he’s done, cooked, out to lunch for good. They could think that he’s walked into their new life with an imaginary friend, a hallucination of a ghost from their shared past, that _Steve_ is here to do the haunting, to be unable to let go. They don’t assume that, neither of them. Their argument about breakfast proves that they believe Billy’s here. It must take a lot of faith to believe that. Steve isn’t sure he’s done anything to earn it, but their belief is--something of a relief.

Steve hadn’t been wondering _exactly_ if he was just going crazy, but it’s not like the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. How many times had he thought about Billy? The burn of him behind his eyes? The crash of the car? The way he’d been slumped when Steve hit the gas?

Steve breathes out slowly and watches El as she walks back in. Her hands are empty, but she says, “Will is finishing the waffles,” with the air of someone who wanted to be in charge of finishing them herself. Steve grins, faintly, at the attitude she carries.

“We don’t know what to do,” Steve says, and he wonders when they became _we_ when he talks about himself, about Billy.

“Eat waffles,” El supplies. Next to him, Billy snorts. It’s strange to be here in this space with him, having a conversation that Billy can hear, but can’t participate in. 

Will comes back with the waffles and slowly, maybe a little reluctantly, the story of the last few days comes out. Billy describes--through Steve--waking up, what he’d thought and then, once his family couldn’t see him, what he’d realized. 

Steve should’ve asked him about that, he realizes, about how it felt. Billy’s voice is quiet when he tells it. He doesn’t look at any of them as he speaks. It’s a little distant, the way he talks, staring at a wall, and Steve wonders if he only knows because he can see Billy’s face, Steve wonders if that’s the only reason he knows how heavy this story is, for Billy. This coming back to life.

It’s the kind of thing that should be exciting, but then, after what he did, maybe Billy does just want to sleep.

A siren outside makes Steve jump, but Billy holds himself still. He describes what it felt like to turn and look at the calendar and realize _October_ and not _July_. 

El nods along with his story, but she doesn’t take any notes. Steve doesn’t know why that surprises him, but it does. He feels like notes should be taken.

What he’s _not_ sure about, though, is how he feels about being Billy’s voice. The parts of the story that Steve says out loud--and he doesn’t say all the parts, some of the things Billy says feel private, like they’re not the sort of thing he’s saying for everyone to hear--what he does say out loud, though, is certainly less _colorful_ than Billy’s wording. 

When the story is over, there’s a pause. Will and El share a glance that Steve can’t read. Billy shoves Steve. “ _What_?” Steve asks, glancing at him, annoyed at the ache in his shoulder.

“Can she _fix it_?” Billy asks. “Like, use her _whatever_? Like she did last time?”

Steve glances at El. “Can you fix it?” he asks her, running a hand through his hair.

“I’m not a fucking _it_ ,” Billy says.

“I’m just saying what _you_ said--”

“Well _you_ don’t get to call me an _it_ , Harrington--”

“Oh my _god_ , you’re an _asshole_ \--”

“I can’t,” El says, and they both stop mid argument and turn to face her in unison. She can only see Steve though, Steve remembers, all of the sudden. That argument must have looked _insane_. 

“What does she mean she _can’t_?” Billy asks as a muscle in his jaw jumps.

“Her powers are gone,” Will says, his voice simple and calm.

El shifts. “Low battery,” she mutters, and it’s a little defensive. “Recharging.”

Billy laughs, low and bitter. “It’s been three fucking months,” he says. “That shit isn’t going to charge.”

Steve doesn’t repeat that. He thinks it’s a little mean, but then, he’s not the ghost. It affects Billy differently than it does him. “Do you know when it’ll be recharged?” he tries instead.

El shakes her head. She twists her hands together and looks down at her lap. She’s struggling, Steve thinks, in this new era of her life in which she can’t bend reality to her will.

Billy is suspiciously silent, so Steve flicks his glance away from El to look over at him. He’s chewing his lip, for a second, and then he sprawls back against the couch. It’s silent, compared to earlier, when he’d crumbled, but Steve’s glad in that moment that he’s the only one who can see Billy. It would feel unfair, if everyone got a good look at the devastation that tears open Billy’s face and bares him to--well, just to Steve, actually.

Steve reaches out and grabs Billy’s hand. He doesn’t think about it, he just does. Billy’s fingers twitch like he’s going to pull away, but at the last second he doesn’t. Steve squeezes and looks at him. For a few minutes, everyone is silent, just the sound of their breathing and cars driving by outside.

“Well,” Steve says, slowly, carefully. He squeezes Billy’s hand, then withdraws. “Even if you can’t give us an answer about this,” Steve says, “Maybe we can get some other answers.” He kicks Billy in the calf. “Sit up,” he says. “Let’s test your ghostly powers.”

Will, at least, perks up at that. Steve supposes that it’s the scientist part of him, the nerd part that never dies. “Hold on,” Will says. “Let me call--”

“I don’t think _everyone_ should know,” Steve says, quickly. He doesn’t want _Max_ to know. He remembers her, that first month, that second month, even now. At first, he thinks, it had been _shock_ , how calm and still she’d been, but it had gotten worse as the weeks crept on. He remembers how hard those kids worked to keep her together, especially once high school started, once the rumors flew around, the girl with the dead step-brother, the maybe monster, did he do it, did he kill all those--?

They were just rumors, of course. Nasty ones. No one really knew the truth, like that Billy _did_ do it, except Max, of course, who got into fight after fight after _fight_. It was only when _expulsion_ was thrown around that anyone had managed to get through to her. That had been only a few weeks ago, mid-September. Joyce and El had driven out to take her for a girl’s day, or something. Her mom had been out of ideas.

She’s doing better now, Steve thinks. He doesn’t want her to know about this, not until they have answers.

“Just Dustin,” Will agrees. “He’ll keep a secret.”

Billy’s quiet, still. Steve looks at him as Will and El leave the room to go and find a phone. It’s easier, they had said, than the radio. 

“You don’t want Max to know,” Billy says, and Steve had expected sadness, but Billy’s voice is angry. 

Steve holds up both his hands. “She had a _really_ hard time,” he says.

“Oh, did she?” Billy bites out. “How fucking _sad_ for her--”

“It _was_ sad for her, actually,” Steve snaps. “Christ, Billy. It was _really_ sad for her. She watched you--”

“Kill?” Billy asks, bitter and low.

“I was going to say _die_ ,” Steve says. “She watched you _die_.”

Billy looks like he has something nasty to say in response, but the kids come back, so he doesn’t say it. Steve doesn’t remind him that it wouldn’t matter if he said it. Steve doesn’t remind him that only Steve can hear him. There are a lot of things Steve _doesn’t_ do right now.

“Steve’s here,” Will’s saying. “And Billy,” he adds.

There’s something like kindness in the fact that Will and El had handled all the explanation outside this room, that Billy didn’t have to tell it again, or hear it again.

“Hi, Steve!” Dustin says, chirping like they hadn’t seen each other not that long ago. Steve rolls his eyes, but it makes him grin.

“Hey, man,” Steve says. “Glad to have an expert on deck for this,” and he can’t _see_ Dustin, but Steve can _absolutely_ picture Dustin preening at that.

“I’ve got to admit,” Dustin says, “Ghosts are _not_ my ballpark, I mean, I know what we know from _Ghostbusters_ , but that can’t be taken as real science--”

“Yeah, man, I know,” Steve says quickly. “We’re just trying to figure out what kind of ghost he is? Like, if there’s--types? Maybe that can narrow it down?”

“Sure, sure,” Dustin says. “Well, there’s always poltergeists.”

“Polter…” Steve repeats, a little dubiously.

“They’re like, toddler ghosts,” Dustin says. “Like, throw shit around, make noises, sometimes hurt people. They’re assholes.”

Steve snorts, “Billy’s definitely an asshole-- _ow_ ,” he says, as Billy kicks him, “and he’s _definitely_ capable of hurting me, _ow_ \--” he breaks off again and swats at Billy’s thigh, “But he’s not--throwing things or making loud noises.”

“That would pretty much be his sole purpose, if he were a poltergeist,” Dustin says, “So we can nix that. That’s like--I mean, I think everything else is just a ghost. What can he do? Can he walk through walls and shit?”

Steve laughs. “That’s a hard no,” he says.

“Hey--” Billy protests.

Steve looks at him, “You want to go walk _into_ that wall right there? By _all means_ you can. I’d love a good laugh.”

Billy goes quiet again, but he crosses his arms and sulks.

“He does eat,” Steve says, “And drink. _And_ piss in my backyard and forget to bring the booze back inside the house.”

“I sleep, too,” Billy says. “And smoke.”

“He sleeps and he smokes,” Steve repeats. “And he picks stuff up and uses it? And changes his clothes?”

Dustin makes a thoughtful sound, “Okay,” he says. “I _have to ask_ \--are you sure he’s not like, your imaginary friend?”

Steve winces, but it’s El who answers, “He ate a waffle,” she says. She pauses, looks uncertain, and then says, a little hesitant, “And I can...feel him?”

“You can _what_?” Billy says, sitting up and leaning forward. He looks a little excited.

“He wants you to say more,” Steve says. 

El’s nose wrinkles. “It is like--like a presence,” she says slowly. “Not--cold or warm. Like--” she shrugs. “Now he is--interested? Before he was…” again, a hesitation, “Very sad,” she says.

Steve and Billy look at each other in surprise. “She’s right,” Steve tells Dustin.

“Huh,” Dustin says. “Well, what happens when he holds stuff? Does it float?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve admits. “I can see him? So it always just looks like him holding something.”

“You have two people there who _can’t see him_ and you haven’t _tested it out_?” Dustin sounds disgusted with them. 

Steve blinks. He hadn’t thought to do that.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re going to try it right now--I have, uhm,” he looks around and then picks something up, “The TV remote,” he says. “Okay, it’s in my hand and now I am handing it to Billy.”

Billy takes it and waves it around. 

Steve looks at El and Will, “What do you see?”

El frowns. “It’s--strange,” she says. “When you handed it to him--it was like--I was distracted?”

“Yeah,” Will says, “I started thinking about something else, and then the remote was gone, but it wasn’t _weird_ that it was? Because I wasn’t looking for it?”

They try it with a few more objects, but it’s the same thing every time. El and Will never _notice_ the object disappearing. They only think about it because they’re being asked to. Each time, they both say it wouldn’t have crossed their minds to wonder where the thing went, if Steve hadn’t followed up. 

Dustin makes another thoughtful sound on the phone.

“What the fuck does _that_ mean?” Billy asks. He’s got a lap full of random shit from around the room. He knocks it all onto the floor.

“Stop being such a poltergeist,” Steve says, rolling his eyes.

Billy stares at him before he laughs, and Steve laughs, too, and it feels better, for a second.

“Okay, so hear me out,” Dustin says. “This is going to sound crazy.”

“Crazier than the fact that I’m being haunted by Billy Hargrove?” Steve asks.

“Okay, well, no. Not that crazy. Here’s what I think you should do--my mom sometimes, when she’s--being weird. She calls this lady? She’s a _psychic_ in Chicago, right, and she like, tells my mom the future, talks to the spirits of the ancestors, all that good shit.”

“That sounds like a scam,” Billy points out, and Steve agrees, but out loud, so that people can hear him, or whatever.

“Do you have any _better_ ideas?” Dustin asks, sounding offended. “I’m trying to _help_ \--”

And the worst fucking part is, they _don’t_ have any better ideas. Not one. Steve groans. “Guess we’re going to Chicago,” he mutters, scrubbing at his face. “Fuck.”

Billy’s grin is razor sharp at that. “You’re the one who said you wanted to go on a road trip,” he points out. “Hey, you’re rich, right? You better spring for a _nice_ motel.”

This, Steve thinks, when they’re finally back outside with the address for Dustin’s mom’s _psychic_ written on a sticky note stuck to the dash and a map spread open across Billy’s lap, cannot possibly be his fucking life.

Except--well--

When he looks over at Billy, the window is rolled down and he’s smoking. He’s got a pencil in one hand, and he takes the cigarette out of his mouth to chew at the eraser as he squints at the map, and there’s something about him that seems--excited is maybe too strong a word, so is optimistic, but there’s something about Billy Hargrove that looks hopeful in that moment, and Steve’s never seen him look like that before, not _ever_.

It’s a good look.

“Harrington,” Billy says, and then he pokes Steve in the arm with the sharp point of the pencil. “Let’s get a fucking move on, pretty boy.”

Steve’s rubbing his arm and grumbling when he pulls away from the curb, Will and El waving at them from the front step of the cute little house, but he doesn’t mind all that much. Billy fiddles with the radio and the highway stretches out before them and--

Well, Billy’s _hopeful_. Maybe Steve can be, too.


	5. v

If you’re dead, Billy thinks, you shouldn’t be able to dream.

Dead, a ghost, whatever. Doomed to haunt Harrington for eternity.

Or until he dies.

What happens then? Billy wonders. Does he haunt someone else? Does he spend eternity alone?

The spiral of his thoughts doesn’t distract him much from what’s happening behind his eyelids. If he were arguing this then his thesis would say: if you’re dead, you shouldn’t be able to dream.

Someone would say, _I think you mean have nightmares_. Specificity matters, or some bullshit like that.

Billy Hargrove wakes up in the passenger’s side of Steve Harrington’s BMW and he’s screaming.

He can’t really hear himself in the moment, but it’s like he can taste the words after.

It’s what he wanted to say. It’s what he _tried_ to say each and every goddamn time, but he could never get the fucking words out. _Go away. Get away from me. No, don’t get closer. Wait--no--stop--_

And then the sharp crack of Heather’s skull right before she goes limp.

She was his first victim. He has _victims_. Lots of them. Plural. Billy Hargrove: murderer. He’s always thought he was bad, but he hadn’t thought he was--evil. He is, he guesses, after everything that happened. He must be.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Billy tells Harrington, who stares at him. It’s dark out. They’ve been driving for what feels like years, heading to this psychic in Chicago, because this is Billy’s life now, or his death, or--he’s spiraling and he knows it. The car is still moving, but he scrabbles at the door handle, like maybe that’ll make Harrington stop.

“You’re a ghost,” Harrington tells him. He looks annoyed, not worried. Billy doesn’t know why Harrington _would_ be worried about him, except for how he can still feel Harrington’s palm on his back, or the ghost of his hand, anyway--and isn’t _that_ a real laugh of a metaphor--so he’d thought maybe he might care or worry or--

“I’m a ghost who _sleeps_ and _pisses_ and I’m going to _throw the fuck up on you_ ,” Billy snarls.

He must not have been screaming. It must have been in his head. Harrington’s face would look different if Billy had been screaming. Maybe he’ll never be able to say what he tried to in that shower. Maybe he’ll never be able to warn _anyone_.

And maybe, then, there are parts of this afterlife that even Harrington can’t share. Billy’s heart thumps in his chest. Or maybe he just knows that’s what it would do, if he weren’t a motherfucking ghost.

Billy is so fucking _sick_ of maybe, and it’s only been a few days, so he’s having a hard fucking time wrapping his head around eternity.

He knows he’s going to be sick in the literal sense, though. He can feel it coming, that pressure, that certainty. “ _Steve_ \--” Billy snaps, and then Harrington’s pulling off on the side of the highway and Billy’s stumbling out of the car, crashing to his knees on the side of the road, heaving.

He wonders what it looks like to people who drive by, but then he remembers that they just won’t notice. They’ll be distracted. They’ll look away and when they remember to look back, it won’t seem strange to them, that open car door. They won’t even notice what’s happening to him.

It would make him laugh if he weren’t heaving, how similar his death is to his _fucking_ life.

He wonders if someone will pull over in this exact same spot, later. He wonders if they’ll see the mess he’s made or if that, too, will be invisible, just like he is.

Billy has a lot of questions and so far all his brain can answer with is _maybe_. That makes him want to throw up more, but he doesn’t. He sinks back onto his heels and wipes across his mouth. He runs his hands through his hair and can feel how frizzed it is, from sleeping in the car.

When he glances back at it, Harrington is leaning against it, his hands shoved into his pockets against a bite in the air. He’s watching Billy. It’s dark on this stretch of highway, but the car gives off enough light for Billy to know that Harrington’s watching him. He wishes that Harrington would touch him again. Billy thinks of all the stupid fucking ways he’d sought out touch, before, in basketball, in the hallways, always too crowded as they moved from class to class. He thinks about all the times he’s bumped up into someone, just to confirm he’s real.

It had always been a little mean, those bumps, that touching. He’d made it mean. Don’t get scared. Don’t get sad. Get angry.

Billy stands up and whirls. He slams his fist into the side of Harrington’s car, and all it does is split his knuckles. Maybe it leaves a dent, too. Billy can’t see that much detail in this low light.

He pulls his fist back to do it again. Don’t get scared. Don’t get--

“Billy.”

Harrington says his name like it’s a whole sentence. His fingers catch Billy’s wrist and squeeze. It stops the momentum of the punch, which is good. Billy doesn’t really want to punch it again. First, it had hurt, but second--

He’s just tired of causing so much fucking _destruction_. He feels a hundred thousand years older than the angry kid who’d told Max, _I break things_.

He doesn’t _want_ to break things.

It’s wild to think that maybe, someday, his spirit will be a hundred thousand years older than it is right now.

October is cold on the side of the road and Harrington’s fingers around Billy’s wrist are so _warm_ and--

He doesn’t _want to break things anymore_.

This time, when Billy heaves, it’s not because he’s throwing up. He bends at the waist and can’t stop himself, can’t stop the fact that tears spill over his eyelashes. Billy’s _always_ been a crier--his dad hated that about him, past tense, because he’s _dead now_ \--but he tries not to do it in front of people, and now Harrington is practically holding his hand, and he’s watching this happen, and--

“I killed them _all_ ,” Billy manages. It’s hard to bend over like this, with Harrington still gripping his wrist. It wrenches his shoulder weirdly. “I killed them _all_ , Steve, I killed _all of them_ \--”

Harrington isn’t saying anything, which means that he knows Billy’s a monster too, now.

Billy wishes that it didn’t hurt like this. Billy wishes all of this would fucking _end_. “I don’t _want_ an afterlife!” he screams, and he rips his wrist out of Harrington’s grip. Don’t get sad. Don’t get scared. “I don’t fucking _want_ it! If I’m going to Hell then just fucking _take me_ \--”

Harrington grabs his wrist again and he’s hauling Billy forward, all of the sudden. It takes Billy a moment to realize Harrington is saying his name, _Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy_ , like Billy can’t hear him. Maybe he can’t. Maybe Harrington’s been trying to get his attention this whole time, but all Billy can see is the way Heather leaned in close right before he grabbed her.

She’d followed him because he didn’t look okay.

And now she’s dead.

“ _God_ ,” Billy spits out, over Harrington pulling him toward the front of the car, “Just fucking _end it_ , I don’t _want_ this--” and Billy hasn’t prayed in a long, long time. He remembers his mother telling him _you shouldn’t pray for selfish things_ , when once, on the phone, he said he’d pray for her to come back, desperate and little and missing his mother. 

He doesn’t think this prayer is selfish. The world should wipe its hands of him. It’ll be better for it. 

Harrington is still saying his name and now he yanks Billy down, and holds his wrist under the headlights. “ _Billy_ ,” Harrington says again, “Billy, shut up for a second and _look_ ,” and Billy doesn’t know why that works, but it does. He snaps his mouth shut and follows Harrington’s gaze to his hand, illuminated by the lights of the car.

They both watch blood drip from his split knuckles onto Harrington’s hand, down Billy’s wrist.

“Ghosts don’t _bleed_ , Billy,” Harrington says. Billy doesn’t have an answer for that. For a while they stand there on the side of a nearly empty highway, both doors to the car thrown open, staring at Billy’s bleeding knuckles in the headlights. 

It’s another question. Finally, Billy says, “Maybe they do,” and he pulls his hand away and gets into the car, hanging his arm out the window as Harrington finally pulls back onto the highway, and he doesn’t say a single goddamn thing, not one, until Harrington pulls into the parking lot of a motel on the side of the road.

“It’s two in the morning,” Billy tells him. “We should just keep going--”

“I’m _fucking tired_ ,” Harrington says, and it’s _mean_ and _exhausted_ , “So unless your _ghostly ass_ wants to _drive_ another several hours, shut the _fuck up_.”

Billy does. Mostly, he’s shocked to hear that fire again. He’s tired, too, but his knuckles aren’t bleeding anymore, at least. He shuts up and follows Harrington inside, where a tired receptionist informs him that they have a room available, king bed, cash only.

Harrington hesitates. “Do you have one with two beds?”

The woman behind the counter blinks at him, slow, like maybe he’s stupid or on drugs or both. Billy almost laughs when she says, “We save the rooms with two beds for customers with more than one tenant.”

Tenant seems like a generous word for someone staying the night at a seedy fucking motel, but all right, Billy can’t exactly question her logic.

“It’s after two,” Harrington protests. “We’ll--I’ll be out first thing in the morning, you’re not going to have any more customers toni--”

“King bed,” she repeats in a tone that says she’s done with the conversation, “Cash only.”

Harrington sighs and slides the bills across the counter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this written for so long, but this chapter finally feels finished, so here's a short glimpse and we'll do the rest of this motel stay with Steve, instead! Blah blah blah writing is hard right now, anyway, more maybe-ghost-kinda-ghost-what's-even-happening-antics coming your way soon, ft: _there's only one bed!_
> 
> I'm on tumblr too, come shout about good fall vibes, ghosts, Billy Hargrove, or why all the characters in st keep trying to get dressed while they are obviously still dripping wet? WHO DOES THAT. I've been mad about it since the 4th of July, truly.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Hey, look up_  
>  You don't have to be a ghost  
> Here amongst the living  
> You are flesh and blood  
> And you deserve to be loved  
> And you deserve what you are given  
> And oh, how much?
> 
> -Florence + the Machine


End file.
